


Journey to the East

by Rethira



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-14
Updated: 2013-01-14
Packaged: 2017-11-25 13:26:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/639351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rethira/pseuds/Rethira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Onwards?" he asks.</p><p>"Onwards," Soren agrees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Journey to the East

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for FE Exchange over on LJ, for cecil_hoshino's prompt:
> 
> 'FE10, Ike/Soren, Ike and Soren travelling the world, having adventures, and maybe bringing along the cat (and by cat I mean Ranulf)'
> 
> This was really fun to write! I hope you like it and I apologise for lateness.

There’s a rush and a squeak and then Ranulf sits up with a large rodent in his mouth and proceeds to look very pleased with himself. He pads out of the long grass and drops the rabbit at Soren’s feet before shifting back.

“There, I caught dinner,” he says, grinning. His ear twitches and he licks his lips.

“One rabbit will hardly feed three of us,” Soren points out, eyes flickering towards Ike.

Ranulf laughs. “Haha, oh yeah, no, I meant dinner for _you_. I’ll catch a few more for me and then – huh, you think Ike could tackle a deer?”

Frowning, Soren glances appraisingly over to Ike, who is currently engaged in the trying activity of fishing, with negligible success. A lone fish lies on the ground near him, barely half the length of Ike’s forearm and nowhere near enough to feed him. Nevertheless, Ike carries on, eying the pole attentively.

“If you can find any deer around, I imagine Ike would be more than willing to try.” As for killing it – well, it wasn’t as if their food problem was a huge concern, what with all the rabbits and fruiting plants. Ike could be extremely soft hearted when the mood struck him, something Soren suspected would continue to baffle him even if he never left Ike’s side for a single moment.

Ranulf’s ears perk up and Soren is entirely sure that Ranulf is laughing at him, but before he can say anything, Ranulf shifts back and bounds back into the grass. There are several squeaks in quick succession, and then Ranulf trots back out with a brace of rabbits in his hands.

“Make sure Ike doesn’t eat those while I’m gone,” he says, dumping them in front of Soren again. “And, uh, keep one fresh?” He does, at least, have the grace to look somewhat abashed at this request. “I mean, skin it if you want but. Well, I guess you know what I mean, don’t you?”

“Are you going to track some deer or is Ike going to spend the entire meal staring mournfully at his fish?” Soren asks, which thankfully prompts Ranulf to hurriedly leave. He makes such a racket that Ike looks up – he has two fish by this point, although neither big enough to comfortably feed Soren, let alone Ike – and grins. “He’s gone to see if there are any deer around. If you’re lucky, you can have some fresh venison.”

“Good idea. The fish aren’t really biting tonight.” Ike stretches idly, and props his pole up awkwardly. A natural fisherman he is not. “Did you want some help with those?” he asks, gesturing towards the rabbits.

Soren sighs and nods.

~  


If you had asked Soren whether they would ever come across an entire field of catnip, Soren would have said “No.” He is, unfortunately, incorrect – Ranulf starts wobbling on his feet when they’re an hour’s walk from it, and by the time they’re within sight of it, he’s gone somewhat manic.

Soren doesn’t even bother to chase him when he bolts. Ike laughs when Ranulf makes a show of rolling all over the nearest patch, shifting mid-roll. He’s licking it before he’s even got up and Soren is already predicting a very thorough disaster of a day.

“We could just leave him here,” Soren suggests. “He’ll catch up in a day or two, and in the meantime he’s perfectly happy where he is.”

“Soren,” Ike chides, gently. “We can’t leave him behind. Besides, what’s an afternoon to relax? It’s not like we have any pressing engagements to attend to.”

Soren _hmphs_ , but starts a fire when Ike asks and tries to sneak some vegetables into the stew he’s making. Sometimes Soren regrets not having spent much time with Oscar, but Ike hardly cares what his food tastes like as long as it’s edible and mostly meat, and Ranulf- well, he eats his food raw on occasion, so he has no room to complain about Soren’s culinary deficiencies.

Ranulf drapes himself over Soren’s back. “Mmm, Sooooooren,” he purrs.

“No,” Soren answers pre-emptively, pushing Ranulf off. He hits the ground with a _whump_ and rolls over, baring his stomach. Ike laughs – Soren likes listening to Ike’s laugh, likes the way it rumbles and fills the air, likes the way it’s always genuine and warm – and reaches over to scruff the white fur. Ranulf’s purrs reach heretofore unknown decibels, before he squirms free and bounds back to the catnip, where he proceeds to roll vigorously.

“You should indulge him,” Ike murmurs. “He doesn’t bite.”

“I’m sure,” Soren replies, stirring the pot gently. “But he would bring it up at every opportunity, if he thought he could.”

Ike sighs fondly, and he pats Soren’s head – it should be awkward, but Soren simply wants to lean into the heat of Ike’s hand and relax – before getting up to try and wrestle Ranulf back over for dinner. Soren watches with veiled amusement; Ranulf flops and rolls and gets distracted, but every time Ike almost has him pinned, he manages to wriggle free. By the time the pot’s started to boil over, Ike is covered in grass and catnip and Ranulf has finally fallen asleep – he drools slightly as Ike drags him back, but doesn’t wake up.

“He’ll sleep for hours now,” Soren comments, doling out the stew. “We’ll be lucky to get moving again before midday.”

Ike just smiles, and eats his dinner.

~  


It’s Ike who finds the village – at least, Soren assumes it was a village. Most of the remaining buildings have fallen into such disrepair it is almost impossible to tell what they might once have looked like, and it’s reasonable to assume that these few that are left were the most well made. Certainly, Ranulf finds a few rough-hewn stones scattered over a much wider area than the buildings might suggest. They’re all but down to their foundations now, just a low wall here and there, and an unnaturally straight river. Most of the village has been grown over with grass and ferns; a few trees dot the river bank.

There aren’t any real signs of who lived here. Beorc and laguz both build great, long lasting structures, and according to Ranulf, some laguz do turn their hand to agriculture.

“The ones living near to Crimea,” Ranulf says. “Some of them get sick of bartering for bread so they just grow their own crops. And there’s the dragons of course, not that they’d have you know about it.” He grins a bit wryly and kneels down to brush some moss off of one of the walls. The stones are greyish – not from around here, Soren notes. That suggests wealth, or at least some way of transporting stone over great distances.

“Did you want to stay, Soren? Have a look around?” Ike asks.

Soren shakes his head. “There’s not enough left here,” he says. “We should move on.”

Ike claps Soren on the back – not as hard as he used to, it must be said – and starts walking. Ranulf rolls his shoulders and trots after Ike. After a last glance around the ancient ruins of the village, Soren follows.

~  


The wyvern is the largest of its kind Soren has ever laid eyes on. It’s as large, if not larger than Rajaion, and for a moment Soren cannot help but wonder if, just maybe, this is no wyvern at all.

But then it bellows and flares its ragged green wings, heaving its body forwards to snap at Ike. It’s claws scrape against the rock as it reaches to swipe at Ranulf – he jumps out of the way in a ridiculously acrobatic way.

Soren casts Elwind – he’s generally loath to use his more powerful tomes, given the fact that he has no way of replenishing his supply, but the great size of this particular beast denies him the luxury of using lesser magic. The wyvern roars again as the magic rips into it, doing far more damage than Ranulf’s claws or even Ike’s sword had been able to. It turns its great head and sets bloodshot yellow eyes on Soren. It snarls and charges at him, mouth opening wide – and Ike steps in between them, Ettard drawn, and buries the sword in the creature’s skull.

It’s dead before it hits the ground. For a moment, all that can be heard is the sound of Ike panting. And then he draws Ettard from the wyvern’s head, the sword scraping loudly on bone, and steps away from it.

“Soren?” he asks, not taking his eyes from the body just yet.

“I’m fine,” Soren replies, bluntly. “As is Ranulf.”

“If you call this ‘fine’ I really don’t want to know what _not_ fine is like,” Ranulf calls from the other side of the wyvern. He’s bleeding all down his side, and Soren can’t quite place when he might have received such an injury.

“We’re all _alive_ ,” Soren stresses.

Ranulf clambers over the corpse, skidding slightly on its scales. “For now,” he grumbles.

Ike glances away from the wyvern, to smile wryly at Soren. “Best fight we’ve had in a while.”

“We’d best move on. Unless either of you have a particular taste for wyvern meat?” Soren glances between them.

Ranulf makes a face, and well, that answers that.

~  


Soren wraps his robes tighter around himself; the wind is bitterly cold. Ahead of him, forging a path through the deep snow, Ike is cloaked in thick furs. Even Ranulf has conceded to the weather. His fur is nowhere near thick enough to cope with this environment, and they had enough furs to spare some to be bound on top of the meagre winter coat Ranulf’s grown in over the past few weeks.

None of it particularly helps. There’s a blizzard coming, and they have no adequate shelter from it. Soren licks his chapped lips, and walks onwards. Ranulf meanders behind him, doing as much as he can to search for any form of shelter at all, although with the coming night and the shrieking wind bringing gusts of snow all around them, Soren doubts he will be successful. All they can do is keep on walking – perhaps Ike and Ranulf will hope that some form of salvation will find them, but Soren is much more realistic.

He clutches his last remaining Fire tome tighter, and contemplates survival.

~  


Soren catalogues each of Ike’s scars. His arms frequently bear little white ones, from thorns and brambles, but they’re like cat scratches; they fade in time. There’s a more permanent one down his right forearm, where an injured stag’s antlers caught and tore. It hadn’t been life threatening, and Ike had asked Soren not to use one of his staves. He’d been forced to slip a vulnerary into Ike’s meal, which was hardly the most efficient method of application, but at least it helped to prevent infection from setting in.

He has another scar on his thigh, this one from a wild wolf. They’d been warned before they left Hatari, but those warnings did little to deter Ike when he was set on something. And perhaps there was something barbaric in it, wearing the furs of creatures so like their friends – not that Soren particularly counted any wolf laguz as a friend, but Ike insisted – but they had saved their lives. That wound had been close enough to an artery that Soren had used a Heal staff despite Ike’s protests, but he hadn’t been able to heal away all of the damage. The tooth marks wrapped almost the entire way around Ike’s thigh, and on particularly bad days, Soren would stare at them and wonder at how close to death Ike had come that day.

There are a collection of scars on Ike’s back – claw marks raking down it, old arrow wounds, the last fading remnants of one of Ashera’s strikes. His shoulder too bears the mark of an arrowhead, but it is the scar on his stomach that Soren despises the most.

Ike has had that one for many, many years. Since before they won back Crimea. It’s a thin white line in the tanned expanse of his skin, and sometimes Soren catches Ike tracing it absently. It could so easily have killed him.

Zelgius left it there, the night he killed Greil.

~  


It’s a cool morning when they finally crest the hill. There’s heather blooming near the top, and a crisp breeze blowing. Ranulf’s stretching languidly and complaining half-heartedly that he won’t ever get the stink of wolf out of his fur when Ike stops.

“Look,” he says simply.

So Soren does.

Ranulf laughs. “Onwards?” he asks.

“Onwards,” Soren agrees.


End file.
